by Carrie Mac
“We’re looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“That girl.”
“What girl?”
“The one in the waiting room.”
“The one we talked to?”
“Yes, Owen,” I said with a sigh. “Could you just let me focus? I need to focus.”
“Sure.” Owen hummed a little tune. “I can do that.” He lifted Hibou up into the air and turned her one way, then another. “Hibou says zero sightings.”
The girl with the rainbow patch was nowhere. But I’d think I’d seen her turning a corner, or up ahead in one of the seats we were looking at from behind. She wasn’t in the cafeteria, or the gift shop. She wasn’t upstairs. When I pushed open the heavy door that led to the outside decks, Owen pulled me back.
“It’s too windy,” he protested. “It hurts my ears.”
“Put your hands over them. Or wait here.” He came with me, his hands pressed against his ears, Hibou tucked safely in his shirt. The wind was bracing, but it was warm. I checked that level, past the lifeboats and tourists with their cameras, a couple making out at the bow. I checked the upstairs deck too, while Owen whined about wanting to go back inside.
I even checked the bathrooms, waiting for every stall to empty, just to be sure. She was truly nowhere. As if she’d vanished off the boat altogether. I was more disappointed than I should have been. I should’ve talked to her more, as we’d boarded the boat. I should’ve made the boys go to the left, like the girl had done, instead of to the right, toward the arcade. We’d shared a look. It wasn’t just a regular look. It was a look. Right? It meant something. Or, no it didn’t. It didn’t and I was just being a freak, making it into something it wasn’t. Change the story, Maeve. There was no look. There wasn’t anything. She was just being nice. She was just a girl. Just one girl out of billions and billions of girls in the world. I told myself that, and believed it.
Only I didn’t.
Or did I?
And then there she was, too far away to do anything about it.
We were walking off the boat, and she was nearly at the parking lot. She was the head above a group of little kids wearing red shirts with black violins on the back. She was ushering them onto a big yellow school bus, taking violin cases and piling them to one side and shaking parents’ hands and talking to another girl who was holding a clipboard. Even if I sprinted up there, even if I could get to her before she got onto the bus too, what would I say? And whatever it was, I’d have to say it in front of those parents and those kids and that pile of violins and that other girl. That other girl was the worst. Did she know her? Were they friends? Clipboard girl smiled at violin girl. She reached out and touched her arm. Her ponytail bounced as she laughed at something violin girl was saying. Who was I kidding? I had no reason to talk to violin girl. And she had no reason to talk to me. The bus pulled away, and what did it matter anyway?
Dad’s chronic lateness came naturally to him, passed down by his chronically late mother. The passengers from our ferry all went their separate ways; then the next ferry loaded, another bus came and went, and still Grandma wasn’t there. We went to the beach and skipped rocks and looked for baby crabs. By the time we wandered back up to the parking lot, I was considering getting the next ferry home. My phone buzzed. I hoped it wasn’t Grandma, because if it was, it meant that she hadn’t even left yet. It was my mom.
I do text you back. Perhaps not right away, but as soon as I can.
Earthquake risk? Remote. But I know you. You’ve already moved on to thinking about something else. Am I right?
Before I had a chance to text back, the boys shouted.
“There she is!” Corbin pointed. There was her old orange station wagon zooming down the hill. She careened to a stop across two parking spots and leapt out of the car, arms outstretched.
“My beautiful creatures!” she shouted. “Hugs! Immediately!”
With Grandma. I’m okay. I love you. More later.
“I’m so glad that you’re here.” Grandma flung open the trunk. Her gigantic dog slobbered in the backseat, leaning his big, blocky head over. “Sherman wanted to come too. Say hello, Sherman.”
I didn’t particularly like Sherman. He left slobber trails on my pants—or my bare legs. And he smelled like the fish oil Grandma put on his food, and like dirty old dog in general.
Grandma dangled the keys and grinned at me. “Want to drive?”
“No thanks.”
“Good place to practice. Not much traffic.”
“I don’t want to drive.”
“Your mother said we should be encouraging you.”
“I never wanted my learner’s permit in the first place. Did she tell you that?”
“Perhaps she’s tired of being your personal chauffeur. Has that ever occurred to you? The moment each one of my boys turned sixteen, I handed them a set of keys to the car and told them I didn’t want to drive them to any more parties or lessons or clubs or movies or jobs. I told them that unless we were going somewhere together, they were on their own or they could try to convince one of their brothers to take them or pick them up. With the exception of if they were drunk or stoned. I’d pick them up no questions in that case.”
“I don’t go to parties. I don’t belong to any clubs.”
“How about a job? About time you got one of those.”
“I don’t want to drive, Grandma. Please.” I climbed into the passenger seat. Sherman hung his head next to mine and panted, leaving a pool of slobber on my shoulder.
“Come on, Maeve.” Grandma leaned in, jingling the keys in my face. Everything was getting louder. The keys, the panting, the boys arguing about which side to sit on. The seagulls screaming outside. A logging truck gearing down. “Get behind the wheel.”
“Grandma, I don’t want to.” I pushed Sherman’s head out of the way. “And I wouldn’t drive anyway because you don’t have booster seats.”
“No one is going to pull you over here.”
“I’m not driving.” I closed my eyes, trying to will away the panic. “I am not driving. Could we stop talking about it?”
“It’s a Volvo, which happens to be the safest car in the world,” Grandma said.
“Not true. Subaru has the safest car. And it depends on how—”
“We’re hardly going far. And I bet you drive as slow as a little old lady. Or a typical little old lady. Those ones with the blue rinse in their hair.”
“I am absolutely not driving, Grandma. I don’t want to, and you can’t make me.” My voice was rising into a shout. “I just don’t want to!” I saw Grandma’s smile flatten, and I tried to calm myself down. “And it’s the law that kids have to be secured in age-appropriate safety restraints until they are nine years old.” Practically a whisper. “You want me to break the law?”
For a moment Grandma was silent. The boys were silent. Sherman was silent. Only the seagulls kept shrieking.
“All right.” Grandma closed the keys in her fist. “Suit yourself. I’ll drive.”
I’d take the bus. A taxi. A train. I’d get a friend to drive. I’d ride my bike. I’d catch a ride with someone. I’d walk. But I didn’t say any of that. She was like Dad in that she was all happy and full of jokes and smiles and hugs right up until the point that she was so pissed off she didn’t even want to talk to you.
The boys did up their seat belts, which would choke them if we got into an accident. I turned around. “Maybe you should sit on your backpacks. They’d be kind of like booster seats.”
“I don’t want to sit on my backpack,” Corbin said.
Owen shook his head in agreement.
“Maeve.” Grandma drew out my name in one long, low growl. “Billy and Claire are fine with it. Just leave it alone now.”
How hard was it to find two booster seats?
We could’ve carried them onto the ferry.
She could buy two and keep them in her car. The boys came over often enough. I would’ve bought two right then,
if there’d been somewhere in that tiny town that sold them, and if I’d had enough money.
As we pulled onto the road, the boys argued about Gnomenville battle lines, and Sherman sat between them, watching the road more carefully than anyone in the car. Grandma drove, eyes straight ahead, not looking at me.
I tried to distract myself from my own catastrophic thinking by counting the driveways as they slid by. I got to sixty-three, and I was still thinking about car accidents.
Two thousand five hundred people died in car accidents in Canada each year. Another twelve thousand were seriously injured. And Canada was not a big country. Well, it was big. But California had more people.
Over thirty-seven thousand people died in crashes in the US. Each year.
Over sixteen hundred of those people were kids under the age of fifteen.
Nearly 1.3 million people died in crashes in the world each year.
You shouldn’t know these numbers, Nancy said. We need to work on that.
You should remember your calculus numbers instead, Ruthie said.
Why don’t you learn the Latin names of the plants in the garden? Mom said.
Holy shit, Dad said. Those are some crazy numbers.
And Grandma wouldn’t want to hear them at all.
Four people died in an accident on Marine Drive this afternoon, local artist Gillian Glover and three of her grandchildren: her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Maeve Glover; and her six-year-old grandsons, Corbin and Owen Glover. If Ms. Glover had listened to the advice of her teenage granddaughter, perhaps the boys would have survived. Sadly, they were ejected from the vehicle due to being improperly restrained.
It was not far-fetched. The year before, a Port Townsend woman had driven a minivan full of second graders to Seattle for a field trip to the art museum, but when they were on the way back, she drove off the road and straight into a huge cedar tree. Five of the children were found scattered around the road and in the ditch. Two dead, three in critical condition. One seven-year-old sailed through the front window and wasn’t found for four days. The reason no one could find him was that no one thought to look up. He was lodged in a tree, so high up that no one would’ve seen him even if they had. A helicopter pilot finally spotted his red jacket from above.
And then I read that he hadn’t died right away. He’d died on the second day. Which meant he was up in that tree all alone overnight, bewildered and confused and scared and in so much pain.
None of those kids were wearing seat belts. None of them had been in booster seats. The woman said that she’d figured that because she was driving them on a school field trip, they didn’t have to wear seat belts, as if her minivan had suddenly and magically been transformed into a great big yellow school bus.
I did not read the obituaries for those children.
Not even for the little boy who was stuck up a tree.
—
After supper we walked down to the beach so that Grandma could go for her daily swim, which she did every single day of the year, even in the dead of winter. I figured she’d probably die like that someday. Drowned. Her body would just drift on the waves until it finally washed ashore. She said she wouldn’t mind drowning. She said if she had to choose between all the horrible sudden deaths, she’d choose drowning. Maybe even out of all the ways to die, she said. Drowning wouldn’t be so bad.
She waded in and then dove over the seaweed and did the breaststroke, fast and sure, until she was so far out we could hardly see her. Corbin followed her, yelping and groaning as he passed the kelp beds.
I did not swim in the ocean. Ever. I loved swimming in lakes—clear water, neatly enclosed, polite little fish—but even just the idea of swimming in the ocean was horrifying. The tide might suck me out and never bring me back. One of any number of big, wet mammals might suck me under and eat me or I’d drown. The ocean was rocky and weedy and full of floaty bits and weird creatures lurking in the dark and pebbly starfish and urchins and garbage and all kinds of writhing, wobbly, disgusting things. The salt felt caked on whenever I got out, and my hair was crunchy with it. It was not refreshing. It was not fun.
Owen felt the same way about oceans. He and I sat on a log, watching the waves and kicking the coarse sand at our feet.
“They’re really far,” Owen said.
“I know.” I’d stopped watching because I could feel the anxiety pushing in. She did it every day, I told myself. She was a strong swimmer. And so was Corbin. She could bring him in if he got tired. But what if she suddenly had a cramp? Or what if something bit her? What if she had a stroke? And then Corbin would be out there all alone. I glanced up and tried to find them way out on the surf.
“There.” Owen pointed.
I saw two tiny specks that looked like seals bobbing along. Too far! That’s too far! But if I shouted, they wouldn’t hear. If I shouted, Owen would hear my fear and he would get scared too. Instead I circled my wrist with my other hand and found my pounding pulse and pressed down hard on the little blue vein, willing it to slow down. I pressed so hard that I winced with pain, and I knew there would be a bruise there later.
After breakfast the next morning, the boys and Sherman headed into the forest behind Grandma’s cottage to build a Gnomenville outpost while Grandma whooped my ass at Scrabble. I’d lost three games in a row when Owen came yelling at the top of his lungs down the path.
“He fell out of the tree and hurt his arm and he won’t stop screaming!”
“Oh my God!” I grabbed Owen’s shoulders. “What happened?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!” Owen hollered. “I think he might be dead!”
“Hold on. Just hold on a minute,” Grandma said. “Owen, you do know what happened. You just told us. And you, Maeve, take it down a notch, for everybody’s sake. Screaming people are not dead people. Now, Owen, go get the first-aid kit from under the bed and meet us on the trail.”
Not even a minute into the forest, I could hear Corbin screaming.
“We’re coming!” Owen hollered as he caught up with us. “I got Grandma and Maeve and the first-aid kit!”
“I’ll take that, thank you.” Grandma lifted the kit out of his arms.
“Help!” Corbin screeched. “I need an ambulance! I need a fire truck! It’s broken!”
Everything I had learned in my first-aid courses fell out of my head and trailed behind me like Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs. By the time we got to Corbin, I had no idea what to do, even though I’d rehearsed this kind of thing in my head over and over.
Sure enough, Corbin’s arm was broken between the elbow and the wrist, twisted into a very wrong S shape. When I looked at it, I wanted to vomit. I actually had to look away.
I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew something bad was going to happen. I should’ve gone with them into the forest. I should’ve been watching them. Let them go, Grandma had said. They’re little kids, playing. That’s what kids do, Maeve. You have to let them be kids.
Including this? Sprawled on the forest floor with a broken arm and so pale that he looked dead, even if he wasn’t?
“Accidents happen,” Grandma said as she opened the first-aid kit and handed me a splint.
Accidents could be prevented. Accidents wouldn’t happen if people weren’t so careless. Accidents happened when people weren’t paying attention, or when they ignored the obvious. Like how stupid it was to let two little kids play alone in a forest teeming with bears and coyotes and a swift-water creek and trees and trees and trees to fall out of.
“Unroll the splint, Maeve.”
So I did. I unrolled the splint and threw it at her. She gave me a quick, cool look and then went to work splinting Corbin’s arm while Owen hopped nervously, chewing his fingers, and Corbin screamed his head off.
“I need a fire truck,” Corbin said once his arm was splinted.
“You don’t,” Grandma said.
“I need an ambulance!”
“No you don’t,” she said. “You di
dn’t break your leg. You can walk to the car. Now let’s go.”
—
Back at the cottage, Grandma arranged Corbin in the backseat with a bunch of pillows to prop up his arm and gave Owen strict instructions to help keep the pillows from toppling over. The nearer we got to the hospital, the less Corbin wanted to go. But within the hour he was wheeled into surgery, protesting at the top of his lungs that he was about to be de-limbed by an embedded agent from King Percival’s army.
“That’s a good sign,” I said as we found a bank of seats in the lobby and settled in to wait for Dad and Claire, who were already on the next ferry.
When Claire and Dad rushed in about an hour later, Claire went straight to the nurses’ station to ask about Corbin, and Dad went straight for Owen, picking him up and clutching him as if he was comforting Corbin by proxy.
“I can’t believe it,” Dad said. “Surgery!”
“It’s just a broken arm,” Claire said as she lowered herself into the chair beside me.
“Just a broken arm?” Dad set Owen down and sank into one of the chairs. “A broken arm is serious, Claire. Especially one that needs surgery.”
“It might be serious if he was stranded in the wilderness for days on end.”
“It can be serious,” Dad said. “Infection. Nerve damage.”
“Well, Billy, of course you’re right,” Claire said brightly. “So let’s all sit here sick with worry. I’m sure that will be very helpful.”
Whatever was happening, it was not about Corbin’s broken arm.
“What do I know?” Claire added, and then she pushed herself up and headed for the vending machine. She fed it some coins and punched some buttons and came back with a handful of granola bars. “Anyone want one?”
“No.” Dad folded his arms. “I don’t.”
“Have one.” Claire held one out to me and Owen and Grandma. “You probably haven’t eaten since breakfast, right?”
I took the granola bar and nodded. Claire sat down again. She pulled a side table in front of her and kicked off her sandals and rested her swollen feet on the table. Dad grimaced.
